


On the Count of Three

by dimtraces



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: 3 Sentence Fiction, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-19 02:25:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14864888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dimtraces/pseuds/dimtraces
Summary: Very short stories about Maul and his brother. Collection.





	1. Maul, weird nighttime noises.

**Author's Note:**

> I love the conciseness of three sentence fic, without the rigorous editing a drabble needs. Here's an archive of the prompts I've done, because I have a bad habit of deleting old tumblr posts. If I ever do enough prompts about anyone else, they'll get their own archive fic.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning:** child abuse.

He’s been in here for weeks now, and he is fairly sure that he’s the only one living in these huge windowed walkways that overlook lava and little else; but the man— _the_ Master _, he called himself_ —he told Maul that he would come back, and not to leave the room, and where the food packs were, and not to open them with his teeth (although Maul’s not listening to that one), and that he was bringing a droid, and that he would come  _back_. And he  _did come_ , he’s _here_ : the noises woke Maul, the loudening small patter of footsteps although they sound weird when it’s shoed feet on ferrocrete and not bare ones on brick ( _an old sound he’s already mostly forgotten,_ he tells himself bravely, because he doesn’t think he’ll be allowed to go back), and now that the Master is here again it hurts less and so he toddles towards the noise and—

“I ordered you not to leave the room,” and—

Lightning.

Silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks astarsdarkheart for the prompt!


	2. Maul & Savage, friendly encounter.

“It’s good to meet an old friend of my brother’s,” Savage rumbles and Eogan Truax eagerly offers his hand to shake, even though—barring an freak traumatic head injury in the last five years or an admittedly much more likely total mental breakdown—even though the young man should well remember that his and Maul’s relationship would be best described as  _simultaneously in the same wretched prison for several days against either of their wishes_  and also  _last survivors_  and  _I don’t even know why I saved your life_.

Maul scowls and pointedly shoves his hands deeper into his pockets, because he should really dispute the inaccurate label before the idea’s built up and the disappointment crushes his brother, and then he remembers three things, namely that one, Truax was a wimp; two, why ever he’s going along with this, if it’s a trick then Maul can still easily take him out; and three—

Savage has a sly grin on his face.  _Friend_  wasn’t naïve false expectations—he knows how Maul feels about people, and it was his terrible attempt at a fucking  _joke_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Runaways, some bizarrely *nice* encounter for the Nightbrothers where no one ends up dead. Thanks SLWalker!


	3. Savage, forgotten.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warnings for the first story:** Major character death, implied child abuse.

When the rain comes, several months have passed since the last turn in the fortunes of the ever-war for the heart of Mandalore: Death Watch, chased from Sundari, the home of Almec who has been named traitor long lies empty, and there is no-one to see the flood burst into his family crypt and wash out its carefully guarded remains. There is no-one to care when, indiscriminately, it steals the bones of long-dead favoured sons and daughters, and those of the hapless outsider that Almec somehow couldn’t just leave abandoned on that floor.

There is no-one to stop Khaysht, who spots the prosthetic arm the rain dumped in a side-street, well-made then and barely rusted now, and brings it home to her own brother, for whom—it will soon turn out—it is only slightly too small; no-one to judge Mir who finds a massive shin-bone and clubs his mother to death with it, before he himself is hurt again; no-one to chase off the akk bitch who pats the horned skull across the yard, entertaining her young; and this time, there is no-one to hurt the small yellow thistle, growing stubbornly on dead pavement and bone-splittered chalk.

* * *

 

Maul is happily fiddling with a knot of mostly useless rope, forcing his left canine into a small gap to start unriddling the mess, when he grows conscious of company, of  _staring_. He hides the rope behind his back, quickly— _Master does not tolerate childish gnawing_ —and then he remembers that there is no Master but Maul on this ship, and that here, now, he can counter and punish any censure of his whims.

No disgust, no censure, no reason to use the lightsaber that Maul has called to his hand: “Oh,” Savage whispers, a warm grin nestled in his hollow cheeks, “Killing knots. I had forgotten you did that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks shadowmaat for the prompt!


	4. Maul, peaceful moment.

The measurements have been taken and retaken, carefully and the right size for the  _right_  body this time, as he has been told in a grateful whisper he didn’t deserve; the gleaming-gold metal procured and shaped and fairly close in coloring to the skin that used to be there (a vanity, perhaps, but what is the point of leading a criminal collective and an entire army if you do not make use of wealth); the innards, finger-joints and nerve interfaces of the new arm prosthetic built and soldered to the very best of Maul’s considerable skill.

Now, only attachment remains.

Savage is cagey about the question of whether he still feels pain now he does not bleed or die, and Maul doesn’t know enough about mechu-deru or Dathomiri magic to be certain – he only knows it  _worked_  – but he remembers his own desperation on Lotho Minor when he drove cables into the burnt scar of his stomach, and very, very gently he raises the multitool and starts to work.

* * *

Maul’s harsh panting subsides slowly but it does—miraculously, there is breath in him still—and the thrumming energy of his limbs gentles until jittery dashes to  _make sure_ turn to pacing turn to grateful stillness, and the blood splattered across his face cools and crusts. All around him on the floor, the aftermath of carnage; what was the office of his old Master is now but overturned furniture mixed with shattered glass and severed limbs strewn across the tacky red floor, as broken as the promises that Maul finally saw through.

A well-aimed kick, and the head sails out the window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks madness-to-my-method for the prompt!
> 
> The first one takes place in [Your death is a number but I cannot count that high](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12196152) btw, where Maul reanimates his brother's corpse after Sidious kills him in The Lawless, hence "does not bleed or die"


	5. Maul, Feral & Savage, Taking Flight 'verse.

“This can’t be comfortable, brother, just let me take him,” Savage whispers, arms already held out palm-side up: a gesture that Maul is 99.9% certain is mostly skittishness still left over from when he desperately, misguidedly, _badly_ tried to fight and abduct Maul.

Maul’s left wing, gone tingly and asleep, agrees.

When Savage tries to lift the snoring child’s head off it, though, little fingers grab onto feathers; and since they’ll land in just few minutes, Maul decides not to call out his new little brother on his offensively badly feigned sleep.

* * *

“No, it’s alright,” Savage insists when Feral runs out the doorway and clings to Maul’s arm, “I understand, brother. I’m old and boring and have a farm and Maul helps you build so many droids, of course you want to leave with him again,” apparently fully expecting and okay with both of them leaving just an hour after Maul had managed to drag his overly energetic and curious younger brother up the hill. This was not the plan: it’s just that Maul knocked over a flowerpot trying to sneak out again alone while Feral was distracted, and that’s it, Maul has to do something or he’ll never be free…

“Please entertain him,” he hisses. “Please. Everyone else I asked was busy, and tonight I have a  _date_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks SLWalker for the prompts! Her universe [Taking Flight](https://archiveofourown.org/series/805758) (and also shadowmaat's and mine) is great, by the way.


	6. Maul, sleep.

There is no need for sleep—only a few days more at most until it ceases to be unwise to leave the prison and challenge Viszla for Mandalore, and anyway, during his training in early childhood Maul was made to stay awake for a week on occasion, not just days, and still he survived—no need for sleep at all, despite the staccato pressure in the hollows of his eyes and the cold sweat and the pit in his stomach, and the shallow envy he feels when his snoring apprentice’s head at one point drops onto his shoulder, and he has to grab onto a horn to keep it there.

Savage, when he wakes, glances at Maul and at the cell, and then he pulls off his loincloth and balls it up and slides it deep into the hollow below the wooden bench, and then he sits on the ground before it. “It’s nicely dark down there,” he whispers, “no cameras, and no-one will get through me, brother. I will keep watch. It’s safe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks SLWalker for the prompt!


End file.
